


Eurus

by The_Evil_I



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, His Last Vow Spoilers, M/M, Season/Series 03-04 Hiatus
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-26
Updated: 2014-02-07
Packaged: 2018-01-10 02:26:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1153671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Evil_I/pseuds/The_Evil_I
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An East wind is blowing.  Sherlock Holmes returns from the shortest exile in history to a London in panic and the greatest case of his life.  Is Moriarty really back, or is there a copycat hiding in the shadows that knows Sherlock's weaknesses just as well as his predecessor?  </p>
<p>My take on what happens post S3.  Rating for future chapters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Exile

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everybody! This is my very first work in this fandom, and isn't beta'd or britpicked. If any of you lovely people would like to volunteer, I'd kill for another set of eyes.
> 
> No warnings as of yet mainly because I don't really know where this is going. As soon as anything comes up, I'll make sure to add tags and warnings and whatever else is needed. Feedback would be fantastic, especially if there's anything I can be doing better! Thank you for reading!

Finality.

That had been the element that was now missing from the movement of the airplane hatch, when Sherlock's dark head came out of eight minutes of exile and blinked in the hazy light coming down through obscuring clouds. John tried not to swallow too hard at the sight of that head, which, unharmed and shaggy, always made his throat catch. Mary, at his side, squeezed his hand. How she always knew what he was thinking and exactly what to do about it once made him feel like he was the luckiest man in the world. Now he couldn't help wondering if this, too, was another trick, another manipulation, and by his wife's sad smile she knew that, too.

Sherlock's grey eyes met his and held them, nodding at something his brother was saying softly that John couldn't catch in the wind and finally breaking their hold, snapping to Mycroft with the incredible speed that John often thought would give him whiplash one of these days. The sudden tension between the two had him walking over, Mary still holding on to his hand like a child, standing between the two brothers who were now clearly avoiding his gaze.

"Sherlock? Mycroft? What's going on?" he asked.

"You might as well tell him," Sherlock said, in that impossibly disinterested voice he had, as though he hadn't just been inexplicably returned from the suicide mission he thought John didn't know about. "If it's as widespread as you say then there'll be no avoiding it once we get back into London."

"Yes, brother mine, I am aware," Mycroft said, his voice strained in that special, Holmesian way, where he sounded only more pompous. Mycroft turned to John and Mary with that small, smug smile that often made John want to show him his military training up close and personally.

"John, I have... information. And while I trust you implicitly..." he trailed off and looked meaningfully at Mary, who was still clutching on to John's hand. Their skin was slightly slick with their sweat, and he only noticed when she let go, letting in the cold outside air. She looked to John once, as though asking him silently to vouch for her, and when he stayed silent she nodded.

"I understand. I'll just be over by the car then, yeah?"

"We'll try not to keep him long," Sherlock drawled to her retreating back. John looked between the two of them, Sherlock and his second miraculous resurrection and his very pregnant wife, walking so slowly and almost teetering back and forth to keep herself upright. For what felt like the thousandth, the ten thousandth time he wondered what they felt about each other, Sherlock and Mary. Sherlock had shot and killed a man who could have torn his family to the ground, and Mary had shot and almost killed him. That had to have complicated and far reaching consequences, and not just for him, who was stuck in the middle. All John knew was that he loved both of them, helplessly, and they had both hurt him more than he felt it was possible to be hurt.

He felt a stab of that hurt again - like he felt it every time - when he looked away from Mary and once again met Sherlock's ice-filled eyes. Whatever it was that he had meant to say before he left, the opportunity was lost now. Whatever had brought him back from exile was obviously more important.

"John," Mycroft said, drawing him out of his pointless and hopeless contemplation and back to the reasoning at hand, "what I have to say goes no farther than the three of us, am I understood?"

Sherlock snorted. "You did say _every_ television screen in the country, Mycroft? You're giving him thirty seconds of precognition before he pulls out his phone and checks his twitter feed."

"I haven't got twitter," John said, at once at a loss, his usual stance when standing anywhere near the two brothers. "Sherlock, what's going on?"

"Moriarty," Mycroft announced, in exactly the same way one might hear about the deaths of their loved ones from a particularly pompous doctor, or the killer in a melodramatic whodunnit on daytime telly.

"Moriarty is... dead," John said, looking from one of them to the other, where Mycroft was looking at his brother meaningfully and Sherlock seemed about to strain something from the attempt not to roll his eyes. John gave him credit for trying. "You told me he killed himself on that roof, Sherlock. Shot himself right in the head. I suppose some people can fake jumping off a roof, but shoving a gun in your mouth seems a little final, doesn't it?"

"If one is possible, why not the other?" Mycroft said. "He is a genius, after all."

"Was," Sherlock corrected sharply. "He was a genius. Now he's a moldering corpse inside a coffin that doesn't have his name on it. Just what he deserves."

"Then how do you explain the broadcast?"

"What broadcast?" John asked, still feeling like an ant watching a tennis game played by two giants. Sometimes he could see the ball going back and forth, but that was about all he could make out. Mycroft sighed in that way he had where he thought John should have picked up on Holmes telepathy by now.

"A still picture of our friend James Moriarty with modulated voices saying, 'miss me?' repeatedly. It seems that he's back, somehow. Our information about what happened on that roof must have been somehow... lacking."

"Oh please," Sherlock said. "You think I can't see right through this little scheme of yours? You must think that my sentimentality has made me into an imbecile."

Mycroft gave him that same thin smile. "I wouldn't use those exact words. And just what, dear brother, is so obviously transparent?"

"That you've arranged this, somehow. Moriarty is dead. I was holding his hand when he reached into his other pocket and swallowed his own gun. The hole in the back of his head was leaking all over that roof - I can show you the stain! There is no Moriarty anymore. A still picture? Modulated voices? What kind of proof is that? I just spent the last two years taking apart his empire and none of the people I met had anything to say about him other than the fact that he was dead and cold. Obviously, someone has planned this. Oddly timed, wouldn't you say, to occur just minutes after I've gotten on a plane on my way to certain death?"

Sherlock locked eyes with John again, just for a moment, a fraction of a moment, just long enough for John to be certain that the other man had found his lack of surprise at this pronouncement and tucked it away somewhere.

"Sherlock, be reasonable," Mycroft said, the twist in his mouth now surly.

"Be reasonable? The only thing that would have been more reasonable would have been if you'd planned this whole thing before I got off the ground. But that wouldn't have been nearly melodramatic enough for you, would it?"

"I'm not behind this," Mycroft said, enunciating each word carefully. "Whatever I might have said to you at Christmas - when I was drugged, by the way, by _you_ \- I would never inspire country-wide panic in such a manner, not for any reason."

Sherlock stood quiet, searching his brother's eyes. If watching them argue felt like being an ant among giants, watching these silent conversations made John feel like an ant among birds. They were too high above him for him to even catch any inkling of their meaning, their purpose beyond him until he climbed too high upon a blade of grass, and was consumed with a single errant thought, never once appearing even as a blip upon their conscious minds.

"I don't believe you," Sherlock said finally.

"Oh for God's sake, Sherlock!" Mycroft finally exploded, recovering himself immediately, the simpering smile fixed back in place with not even a single sign that he had ever been out of it. "I just told my superiors that you were going to look in to this little problem of ours. If you're going to do nothing, I could have just left you on that plane."

"Mycroft," said John, making both Holmes startle as though they'd both forgotten that he was there. Damn them both, they probably had. "Is he really back? Sherlock has a point. No live footage, not his voice? Why be worried when odds are it's just a copycat, or someone using his image as a scare tactic?"

"Because, John," Mycroft explained, with infinite patience, "it doesn't really matter if it's him or not. If it is him, Moriarty, what does he have now, to tempt him back into the shadows? Sherlock, as he just explained, has spent the better part of two years tearing apart Moriarty's web. What else can such a man do, when he has no shadows to hide in? I'm afraid we're going to be looking at something big. Something very unlike any of his previous... games. Even if it isn't him, even if it's someone else, they obviously have resources and are going to use them to whatever ends. I only hope that Sherlock realizes that someone out there needs to be caught, and that he has been especially spared to go out and do the searching."

"Great," Sherlock said, with a sigh and a roll of his shoulders. John realized that he'd unconsciously straightened, his own shoulders back in military discipline. "Now you've convinced queen-and-country. I'll never hear the end of it."

Mycroft relaxed infinitesimally, a twitch of his features that John never would have noticed without watching Sherlock so often and for so long. "Then you'll look in to it?" he asked.

Sherlock made a thick sound in his throat. "It appears that I have very little choice. Either we have a criminal mastermind back from the dead and suddenly without his web, or we have a very clever copycat who realizes the same thing. I still think you have something to do with this, Mycroft, but I'll put aside that possibility for now." He paused for a long time, looking back and forth between his brother, and John, and a look behind John that he realized was meant for Mary, making John flush with the sudden guilt that he'd hardly thought of her once. He turned, too, to see Mary lift one hand from where it was wrapped around her upper arm and wave it at him.

"Um. Is that all for right now? Mary looks cold, I should take her home." Mycroft looked at him and smiled, Sherlock looked transcendentally disinterested. "Sherlock, I'll meet you at Baker Street once I've dropped her off?" Sherlock waved one hand at him, already lost in thought.

"Yes, if you must." "Right." John looked at Mycroft, who held out a hand as though bestowing a blessing. "I won't say anything," he promised. "I know," Mycroft said. "Best get your wife home." And how could he ignore that little inflection, the power the elder Holmes put into the words _your wife_? All John could do was smile politely and pretend that he didn't want to cave the man's face in with his fists and turn away.

The wind was at his back, and so when Mycroft spoke to Sherlock and asked him, very firmly, "I think it's time you told me what actually happened on that roof, dear brother," John heard every word. Just like he knew he was supposed to.


	2. Home Is Where the Heart Is

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, thanks to everyone who visited and subscribed! This is the last boring chapter - next time we get to delve into Sherlock's head a little bit, and things start to happen around London that our boys have to start looking into. Still unbeta'd and not britpicked, so all errors are my own. If anyone wants to volunteer for either, I would be eternally grateful. Enjoy, and please feel free to leave a comment if there's anything that should be fixed.

Mary didn't say a word as he walked over to the car and opened the door, silently slipping into her seat and looking down at her hands until he crossed to the other side and let himself in next to her. The relief from the wind was immediate, reminding John that he hadn't felt the cold at all. It was nothing compared to the chill in Sherlock's ice colored eyes.

Moriarty. Christ, Moriarty. But it couldn't be, and he wouldn't allow himself to think about it - _him_. Not yet, not until he got Sherlock alone and tried to force out of him what he knew Mycroft couldn't - what actually happened on that rooftop.

Mary reached a hand across the seat between them, and John took it unthinkingly. It was cold, and he rubbed his thumb across her knuckles, trying to give her wordlessly what he couldn't give her any other way. He didn't even know what it was anymore, what he felt for her. Love? Yes. Of course. But it was a sad, diminished thing. A shining, perfect memory shaded with grey melancholy, a constant wish for something which faded deeper into the past with every passing day.

"Is everything all right?"

"Hm?" John started out of his reverie. Mary was looking at him with concern, and affection, and love, and he wished he could trust those feelings in her bright eyes. Instead he looked out of the window, where he could still see the upright figures of the two Holmes brothers, standing like iron statues against a grey sky.

"John?" Her tone was the rioting emotions in her eyes given voice, and John repressed a shudder.

"Fine," he said, and tried to smile, feeling it creep across his lips and then die there.

She squeezed his hand. "You've always been a terrible liar," she said, and the silence that fell between them was thick and poignant.

When the car finally started, John pulled his hand away from his wife's tender caresses and put it on his thigh, where he kept it the whole ride.

The car pulled right in front of their flat and stopped, idling. John went to get out but Mary caught his arm, looking at him with such blatant depth of emotion that it made him dizzy. He almost preferred Sherlock, with his emotions so deeply buried that his eyes were flat with hidden feelings, to this too-obvious outpouring of sentiment.

"What?" he snapped, thrown off by the sudden movement and the mental comparisons between the two of them that weren't fair, didn't make any sense.

"I just... you know you can tell me, don't you?" she said.

He shook off her hand. "No. I can't."

Shame caught up with him at the top of the stairs when he turned around and saw her, his wife, wobbling slightly with the weight of their child in her belly and looking down at the ground with obvious pain in her eyes. John walked back down the steps and gently took a hold of her arm, guilt washing over him anew when Mary's pleasure broke out pink across her cheeks.

"I'm sorry," he said, keeping a firm grip on her and unlocking the door. "It's just that Mycroft... well, you know," he finished lamely. He didn't have to tell her that she was not on the list of Mycroft's favorite people, having shot and almost killed his younger brother. Magnussen's claim that she was the first in a chain that controlled the politician couldn't have gotten her any points in her favor either.

It seemed that he didn't have to tell her much of anything, anymore. Everything that was wrong between them, every quiet moment, went unspoken. They both knew too well what it was that was keeping them silent.

The pregnant silence between them lasted until John went into the kitchen, Mary trailing behind and leaning heavily against the counter while John filled the kettle with water and switched it on, waiting for it to boil. He wanted to say something, he wanted her to speak, to break the awkward pause between them that felt like it had lasted longer than their whirlwind courtship. How had he been married to this woman longer than he had known her before? But there were no words, like there were never any words, and when the kettle clicked off he poured two cups of tea, handed his wife the decaffeinated earl grey and watched her minute flicker of distaste, just the same as always. He moved into the living room to sit on the couch and she followed him like a shadow, still quiet.

"Are you leaving, then?" she asked, eyes lowered, staring into the surface of her tea like it held all of her answers.

"Soon," he said. Sherlock would be waiting for him, and he couldn't abandon him, not for this. It wasn't... it couldn't be Moriarty, but John and Mycroft were of a like mind at the thought that a copycat could be even worse. At least for London.

"Is it safe?"

That made him pause in the middle of taking a sip of his own tea, self-hatred blooming in his gut like blood from a gunshot (and wasn't that the worst analogy, the one that made him hate her even more?). John had no idea if it was safe or not. He had just been planning on leaving her here, alone. If Moriarty was back surely he would know as well as, or even better than, Magnussen who knew that Mary was the weakest and easiest target for him, Sherlock, and even Mycroft Holmes.

"Keep your gun on you," he said, and got up, his teacup empty, to take it to the kitchen. This time she didn't follow him. John hadn't even taken his jacket off, he noted. Hadn't even relaxed, not even in his own flat to make a cup of tea and sit with his wife.

He went back into the living room and saw her sitting where he'd left her, her cup of tea growing cold in her hands as she stared at the couch, where John had been spending the vast majority of the nights of their married life.

"If anything happens, anything at all, you call the police and then you call me," he said, knowing even as he spoke that it was a fucked up hierarchy but knowing that they would be able to get to her faster if anything happened to her. "I don't care what it is. If you feel the slightest bit off, you call the police. Do you understand me?"

She nodded, not quite meeting his eyes. John hesitated, and then walked over to her, dropping a kiss on the side of her head, feeling her leaning into it like a woman starved for affection, which, of course, she was. Another bite of self-recrimination swept through him like nausea. He kissed her again, feeling her soft hair against his lips and wishing that he could feel more. Anything at all, except the consuming emptiness where there used to be love.

"Be careful," he said, whispered carefully against her hair, and he could feel her shake as she chuckled.

"I'm always careful," she said. "This is rather unlike you, John. What's going on?" He flinched. It was unlike him. When was the last time he had kissed his wife?

Then John considered her question, and hesitated. Mycroft told him not to say anything, but what had he said that Mary wouldn't find out the moment she switched on the telly after he walked out the door?

"I don't know," he said finally, feeling the lameness of the words as they limped out of his mouth and wishing that he had more to offer her. "He thinks... well. Moriarty."

Mary's eyes widened hugely at his last word. They hadn't known each other until after the madman had been dead and buried (at least that's what Sherlock claimed), but it would have been hard to live in London and miss the spectacle of the trial and the last days of Sherlock Holmes' former life.

"He thinks that Moriarty is back?" Mary asked, cautious.

"Sherlock says that he shot himself. On the roof."

And Mary started to say something and then stopped herself, and John felt all of the tender feelings rush out of him because he could see her bitten back words in her eyes, could see them so clearly in her face and her guilty flush that he ignored every part of him that was begging him to drop it, to let this one go.

"And yes, I do believe what Sherlock tells me." He could hear his own voice, low, dangerous, and he hated it, hated that Mary broke eye contact and looked away, saying nothing in her own defense (what _could_ she say?). He hated how on edge he always was, he hated that there were two people in the world that he had ever really trusted, really loved, and both of them betrayed him.

"I'll bet he's waiting for you," Mary said softly, and John felt himself turn away from her and walk toward the door, closing it behind him and feeling the first drops of sudden rain that splashed over his face and hands, so disconnected from the feeling of his own skin that it could have been happening to someone else. He hailed a cab and happened to look out of the window as he passed by their flat, seeing Mary's pale face in the window as she watched him leave.

He didn't wave, and she didn't smile.

The heaviness in his gut faded more and more the closer he got to Baker Street. It used to be the exact opposite. It used to be, in the early days after Sherlock's suicide, that even thinking about Baker Street left him sick and shaking, every step nearer to it like the gravity was increasing with every moment.

Now the place that made him feel that way was his own home.

There was nowhere that he felt normal. Nowhere that he could escape from the terrible pain and the constant guilt and the terrible, constant _pressure_ that he wasn't behaving the right way, that he was missing some small, crucial word or phrase or action that would mend all the gaps in his life and make him feel whole again.

The door of 221B Baker Street loomed like the door of a haunted house in a nightmare, but he knocked anyway. Sherlock always scoffed when he didn't just let himself in with the key that he still had tucked away on his key ring, but it always felt like too much of an imposition. Of a promise that he wasn't sure the conditions were and that he was too afraid to make.

Mrs. Hudson opened the door with a wide grin on her face, just as she always did, and John tried to push past yet another curtain of guilt to smile back and try not to think of her as someone else that he'd failed. It wasn't always easy.

"John!" she said, and pulled him in for a messy kiss on his cheek. "Come on in. I think he's waiting for you." She didn't ask about Mary. She never did, anymore.

"Ta, Mrs. H." Climbing the stairs was another exercise in flashbacks, trying to shut out memories from better times and easier times, remembrances of when he was happy and when he was desperate for Sherlock to just please, please be alive.

Mrs. Hudson left him at the top landing with another smile and a soft squeeze on his bad shoulder, something that she could never remember to steer clear of, and with a deep breath John knocked on the door and let himself in without waiting for a response.

On the other side was Sherlock, muttering to himself and running his hands through his hair absentmindedly until it resembled nothing more than a very scared cat perched on top of his head. He was obviously deep in thought, looking at pieces of paper tacked on the walls and interspersing John's name between sentences. John finally felt the last of his tension melt away. He felt more at home here than he felt in his flat with the woman he was married to, because if Sherlock was in 221B, John was never really out of it.  
  
He went into the kitchen to make tea, humming to himself and making mental bets about at what moment his best friend would actually notice that he was there.


	3. Here With Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I lied. This actually starts to get interesting next time, I promise. I just wanted to jump into Sherlock's head for a little while and see what he thought about everything that's been going on, and here we are. Thank you to everyone who has been with this so far and please, let me know what you think!
> 
> Unbeta'd, not britpicked, so if you see anything that should be otherwise let me know and I'll fix it as soon as I can. Enjoy!

Sherlock took a long sip of lukewarm tea, and didn't notice that it was in his hand until halfway through swallowing, resulting in a very sudden and quite inappropriate spit take.  
  
John laughed. John who was, of course, sitting on his usual chair, laptop spread across his lap and a fond smile on his face. The lines on his face were more pronounced than they used to be, and stress was making the blue-black pits deepen beneath his eyes and the splash of gray flash dully in his hair, but he looked relaxed here. That was... good. He could be at home right now, thinking about how his best friend was halfway to Eastern Europe and never coming back. Sitting at his chair at Baker Street and smiling at Sherlock was ultimately more preferable. Only for John, of course. Sherlock himself didn't care where he was, but John would be happier with him here and he allowed himself to believe the lie even as he thought it.  
  
Sherlock tried to frown back at his amused friend but the tea dripping down his chin was much more embarrassing than endearing and he reached for a takeaway napkin stacked in piles on the table.  
  
"Bet they don't have curry takeaway in Serbia," John said, smile slipping a bit, and Sherlock cursed mentally. Of course their minds were running on parallel tracks the one time he wished John could be as much of an idiot as Sherlock accused him of being.  
  
"I wouldn't know," Sherlock said airily, and turned back toward his wall, determined to close off this avenue of conversation, but John was tenacious.

"You lied to me again, you know," he said, and the tone was almost conversational, almost casual, but for the angry bite almost completely hidden behind the hurt words.  
  
"Yes, John, I do know," Sherlock snapped back. "And I fear that I shall continue to do so for the remainder of our acquaintance. Now, can we please get over it? I can't believe that you've forgotten the much larger problem on our hands."

They both froze for a moment, Sherlock watching John's face carefully for his thoughts, trying to find some indication of how to act, but within seconds John was shaking it off and smiling again, a little more subdued this time.

"Right," John said. "Fine." The smile faded completely, and he pressed a few buttons on his laptop. "The video is online, as I'm sure you're aware. It's got almost forty million hits already. Most of the comments are confused, a lot of people seem to think that it's some kind of a hoax."

Sherlock moved around to behind John's chair, peering close at the screen that John was reading off of and getting close enough to the back of his friend's head that he could smell the faded scent of his shampoo. Something much more feminine and flowery than what he had used at Baker Street. _Marriage changes people_ , Mrs. Hudson had said. Maybe she meant in all these little ways, the ways that made him Mary's John, instead of his. He shook that thought off violently.

"It _is_ a hoax."

John leaned back over his shoulder to look at him, their faces too close suddenly. John's eyes were calculating, narrowed; the relative intimacy of their position ignored with the tension between them.

Sherlock leaned backwards, out of John's space, running his hands through his hair and silently damming his brother. "He meant for you to overhear and there was nothing to it," he said testily. "On that rooftop. There was nothing more. I was there when he shot himself and then I jumped."

"You still haven't told me _how_ you jumped," the older man grumbled, but he broke off the eye contact and looked back at his computer, clicking through whatever he was looking up.

Sherlock peered at his friend quietly while he was otherwise occupied. It was admittedly strange having him here. No, it was deeper than that. It was strange to _be_ here. He had killed a man. Not a very good man, to use John's situationally convenient phrasing, but he had still proved to his friend that he was just as able to kill in cold blood as the ex-soldier. It was not unpleasant to have John here now, brushing aside his rudeness with as little actual recrimination as he usually did, sitting in his chair and researching things that Sherlock himself couldn't bother to look up.

Questions bubbled in Sherlock's mind as he regarded the man he thought of as his best friend. He was here now because he had almost lost Sherlock today and he knew it. He was here because it didn't matter what Sherlock said was the truth about Moriarty, he wouldn't let Sherlock stay alone while there was even the possibility of danger. A heaviness settled darkly on his heart as he thought of the other person John should have the desire to protect just as much.

"John," he said, hearing his heart thudding in his ears. He waited for John to look up with a blankly expectant look. "Mary?"

He got to watch the immediate shuttering of John's face, with the realization that that topic of conversation was just as unwelcome as it had been in months previous. Strange, but also very... not strange. They had reconciled, but the obvious distance that was between them (at least from John's side, whom Sherlock saw much more often) was taking longer to heal than the gunshot wound in Sherlock's chest.

It would not be anything like Sherlock to admit that there was anything resembling worry going through his mind concerning his friend. But there was something that he would not be hesitant in terming concern. Mary was quickly approaching her due date, and John was ill equipped to become a distant father. It would be incredibly unfortunate for John and Mary to drift apart after all of the effort Sherlock had personally invested in keeping the two of them together.

"She's at home, she has a gun, and she's better trained with it than I am, which you should know very well. I'm more worried about you doing something stupid than I am her getting into trouble." He turned back to his computer again but Sherlock could read the guilt in his face just add easily as John could read YouTube comments. Maybe easier, when taking the average literacy level of YouTube users into account.

"She was Magnussen's target for a reason," he said carefully. John was getting that stiff tension in his face and shoulders that usually preceded a violent reaction. In the past, he would exit the flat, 'get some air' and return hours later with his body forced into calmness and the lines of his arms and shoulders closer resembling the civilian he was now than the soldier he used to be. He didn't have that freedom now and he knew it. This wasn't his home anymore. If he left, if he walked out, he would not return until Sherlock invited him, and only then if Sherlock made him feel like he was uniquely needed.

Sherlock knew he had to tread carefully here or else push his best friend away. Again.

"In case you missed it, Sherlock, Magnussen was her target just as much. He never had a gun to her head, did he?" John shook his head, trying to shake, Sherlock knew, the memories of that night out of his head. Sherlock knew the feeling intimately. If he could forget being shot by John's wife, he would.

Then he frowned. No, he probably wouldn't. The personal knowledge that he'd gotten from the experience outweighed any discomfort that had occurred as a result. Internal bleeding was not a feeling that he would wish on anyone (except maybe his infernal brother) but having been through it and lived to take notes on the sensation was well worth the discomfort. Add to that the experiments on healing rates of gunshot wounds that he was never going to tell John about, all in all it was a perfectly stimulating experience.

He decided never to mention any of those conclusions aloud. John looked poorly enough without Sherlock himself saying anything about his near death (but not nearly as near enough as John complained) experience.

Sherlock took a deep, fortifying breath, and then let it all out with a gusty sigh. What was he even doing? Pushing John back into Mary's waiting arms was all well and good if he wanted to be there, but every indication showed that he was happier _here_ , more relaxed _here_ , with _him_ , and something about that made Sherlock's heart beat so violently in his chest that he wondered what he had ever seen in Mary that made her worthy to have John in the first place.

"On the other hand," he said, " _I_ had a gun to _his_ head."

"Sherlock," John growled, a warning.

Warnings had never held much interest for Sherlock, except as indications that he was finally pushing hard enough to draw honesty out of John with much of the same amount of effort that it took to draw water from stones.

"I just think it's a little strange that the mental picture of your wife being a murderer is so anathema to you when you were actually standing four feet away from me when I shot and killed a man in cold blood."

John snapped. "Because it was _you_ , Sherlock! Because it was you that she shot and I don't care what you say about 'surgery' because I might be a pathetic doctor but even I can tell that being shot in the chest could have killed you. Alright, stop it now. I don't want to talk about this." John's color was up, his breathing accelerated and his heartbeat high. Obviously bothered, painfully so.

Sherlock frowned at him.  John couldn't possibly think that he enjpyed having these emotionally fraught conversations. "I don't particularly want to talk about it either but it's obvious that something is bothering you, and if you can't focus because of these conflicting emotions then you won't be much help to me." They both knew that it was a pathetic excuse for Sherlock's concern, but it was usually one that John accepted without comment. That was one of the many benefits of having John for a friend - he hated sentimentality as much as Sherlock did, he was just able to hide it better under his guise of masculinity.

This, however, appeared to be different. John laughed, but it was a far different thing than the laugh when Sherlock had tea spilled all over his face. This was somewhat more brittle, mocking in a way that John usually wasn't. John never mocked him - teased, yes. They had their playful interactions that made Sherlock smile and wonder if this is what he'd been missing all throughout his youth when his parents insisted that he make friends, but when John spoke like this it made him sound exactly like everyone in Sherlock's life that had ever called him a freak. He hid his flinch very well. "Oh? Is that all this is about still, the Work?" John spat. "Are you still trying to claim that the Work is all you care about? Then answer me this. What were you really going to say before you got on that plane, Sherlock?"

There was no answer to that question that would cause this to end happily. So the only simple solution was that Sherlock said nothing. He turned away from his friend and went back to the pictures on the wall, knowing that John would know it for both the refusal and answer that it was. It wasn't fair, John knew very well what he was going to say on that runway. It was trite and common and everything else that Sherlock hated to be but it was going to be the last time that he saw his friend and he just wanted, once in his life, before his death, _properly_ this time, to say the words out loud.

He had not. Sherlock still couldn't determine with any degree of accuracy if this was an act of bravery - John had his wife, didn't need him anymore, Sherlock wouldn't intrude with his unwanted emotions - or cowardice.

"No?" said John, still mocking, still hurt, but with a more tender undertone that Sherlock was positive he didn't deserve. But that, too, was John, Everything negative about Sherlock that had ever frightened people away was endearing to the ex-soldier sitting down in his customary chair. "No answer?" he went on. "That's what I thought. Don't you dare try to belittle my emotions when you're so bad at pretending that you don't have any."

 _It's not like that at all_ , Sherlock wanted to protest. But he had gotten perhaps as far as opening his mouth when there was a knock on the door downstairs. They waited, tersely, for Mrs. Hudson to open it and then her little thin cry of recognition that wafted up the stairs told John what it had only taken the knock on the door for Sherlock to recognize.

"Mycroft," John said, putting his head into his hands and rubbing at it so vigorously that it was a wonder he didn't have even deeper bruises beneath his eyes.

The man in question burst through the door of the flat not moments later like he owned the place, taking in everything that had occurred between them with a practiced scan of the room. His suit was immaculate, his umbrella twisting gently between the fingers of his right hand as he surveyed them. He looked just as collected as he would have been even if Sherlock had indeed left the country, he was sure of it. _Your loss would break my heart_ indeed. What rubbish.

"Mrs. Watson at home, then?" he asked archly. Sherlock bit his lip instead of replying. Of course she was at home. John had said as much at the airport that he was taking her home. He was only saying it now to make John feel even more aware of the choice that he'd made between the two of them.

"Leave him alone," he said quickly, when he saw the flash of guilt running across John's face like a searchlight. "You've got something new, or else you wouldn't have come. What is it?"

Mycroft turned to him with thinly, very thinly, veiled annoyance. Also a show. He was just as glad that Sherlock was still in the country as John was. Maybe more, if he was telling the truth and honestly didn't have anything to do with this whole Moriarty debacle. Less legwork.

"We've traced the signal of the message back to a warehouse. I think you should come. I've also taken the liberty of informing Gregory Lestrade, of the Yard. I think you two work so wonderfully together, don't you?" It was another pointed dig at John but this one was much easier to ignore - at last, there was a crime scene. So much easier then looking at a wall with pictures on it. More data.

He leaped away from the wall, rubbing his hands together in gleeful anticipation. It could not be Moriarty, that was impossible. But someone else was behind this, someone clever enough to use Moriarty as a cover. Sherlock knew that he owed this mysterious phantasm his recent return from exile, and he was intending to pay that debt back. How better to repay a criminal then by caring enough to chase him down?

"We'll take a ride to the scene," he said airily to his brother, who raised his eyes to the heavens in response. "John?"

It was the only question he could ever ask that he always knew the answer to; it shouldn't be comforting, should be boring, horrifyingly so, but it wasn't. Already John was pushing his arms through the holes of his jacket and wearing that grin that looked so perfectly in place on his thin lips.

"Right behind you," he said.

Mycroft sighed at them both as they all three of them exited the flat and went to catch the man hiding behind the dead face of the worst psychopath the world had yet known.

 


End file.
